An excellent chapter on Atchison's presidency can
be found
in the book titled David Rice Atchison, Border
Politician
by William E. Parrish (1961, University of Missouri Press, pages 81-85)

A nice summary can be found in the book The
People's Almanac #2 by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace
(1978,
William Morrow and Company, pages 178-179).

There is a brief discussion about Atchison's
presidency
in the book The Straight Dope by Cecil
Adams
(p. 134-35, Ballantine Books, 1984).

President
of the United States for just one short day.

Quick: Who were the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth
Presidents of
the United States (under our current Constitution)? If you're like the
typical American, you probably have no clue.

So here's a refresher for you:

#11 was James K. Polk

#12 was David Rice Atchison

#13 was Zachary Taylor

Hold it! I can hear you screaming all the way over here -
David Rice
who?

They never taught you about this guy in history class. In
fact, they
said that Taylor was Prez #12, not #13.

What's going on here?

First, a bit of background:

David Rice Atchison was born on August 11, 1807 in a place
named Frogtown,
Kentucky. Today it is called Kirklevington (They should have stuck with
Frogtown).

At the young age of 36, Atchison was appointed to the United
States
Senate to replace a Missouri Senator that had just died. He held this
office
for 12 years, from 1843 to 1855.

Then it happened:

President James Knox Polk was scheduled to step down from
office at
noon on Sunday, March 4, 1849.

Uh, oh! BIG problem!

It seems that President-elect Zachary Taylor was a religious
man and
refused to be sworn in on a Sunday. It was the Sabbath. Taylor insisted
on waited until the following day.

The big question arose: Who was going to serve as the
President during
this twenty-four hour period?

Normally, the Vice-President (George M. Dallas at the time)
would fill
the position, but his term expired along with Polk's. Dallas had
actually
resigned as President of the Senate on Friday, March 2nd.

Under the law, the Presidency then fell to the President Pro
Tem of
the Senate. You can guess who that was - David Rice Atchison! Atchison
had just been elected for an additional term to this office during the
closing hours of the Thirtieth Congress.

As
a result,
Atchison legally became the President for a twenty-four hour period,
even
though he was never elected to this office or sworn in. That's a
daguerreotype
of Atchison on the right.

Now if you were President for a day, what would you do?
Declare war
on some dinky little nation? Bomb your enemies? Appoint your friends to
office? Make some weird executive decision?

Atchison did none of these things. When asked what he did on
this day,
he commented "I went to bed. There had been two or three busy nights
finishing
up the work of the Senate, and I slept most of that Sunday."

In other words, this particular day was uneventful in American
history.
No major executive decisions needed to be made.

Many, including Atchison, have questioned whether or not he
was actually
President. Technically, Atchison was appointed as President Pro Tem for
each session of the Senate. Since the previous session of the Senate
had
been dismissed, one could claim that Atchison's term had expired (even
though he was to continue in this role when the Senate reconvened for
the
next session).

This leads to a very interesting question: If there was no
President,
Vice-President, President Pro Tem, a dismissed Senate, and a dismissed
House of Representatives - Who in the world was running this
country?

Even if one could prove that Atchison wasn't President for the
twenty-four
hour period between the two Presidents, he definitely had the job for
several
minutes.

Here's why:

On Inauguration Day the first person to be sworn in was David
Rice Atchison
as President Pro Tem. So now he was definitely President
(congratulations!).
Atchison then ended this short stint as President with the swearing-in
of the new Vice-President, Millard Fillmore (he would become President
in just sixteen months following the natural death of Zachary Taylor).
The entire Senate then proceeded to the east portico for the
inauguration
of the new President.

So ends the reign of one David Rice Atchison as the leader of
the United
States. We may never truly know for sure if he actually was President
for
that short period of time, but, let's face it, it makes for a better
story
to think that he was.

Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to
decide.

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